[box]RVWD is my abbreviation for Religious Vocabulary Word of the Day. (You can read my introduction to the RVWD series here.) I do not intend for these word investigations to be exhaustive, but I hope they stimulate some thinking about assumptions. Possibly they will help with honest evaluations about what is truth and what is unnecessary baggage in life. [/box]

This is going to be short, because it really isn’t that complicated, from what I can see. A survey of the Old and New Testaments (use the search function in the blueletterbible.org) seems to show the use of the phrase “a word from the Lord” in two distinctly different categories. Not surprisingly, one category is applicable before Jesus came to earth, and one is how the early church used the terminology.

In the Old Testament, people rarely had the advantage of God’s spirit directly with them. As such, God made use of trusted prophets to communicate many times. These were men and women who could make it very clear that they were, in fact, speaking “a word of the Lord.” It is worth noting, however, that even then, it was not that people needed constant direction to make good decisions. Before the time of Abraham, there is evidence that people just knew and remembered things about God, unless they had chosen to turn away from Him. After Abraham, and the subsequent founding of the nation of Israel (which you might be thinking about wrongly), people still knew, but often disregarded this knowledge. It was commonly because of wanting to help them avoid trouble from their own horrible choices that God would send special word.

The time when Jesus was on earth, He was able to speak uniquely as the very real mouthpiece of God. It is notable that he didn’t feel the need to always claim to be doing so. Even when He made statements about His own deity, it was not with heavy-handed proclamations. He didn’t need to wow anyone with such grand introductions to his teachings and warning. He just spoke the truth and it either healed people’s souls or made them angry enough to kill.

When the beautiful news of His death and resurrection were being shared, THAT was predominantly the “word of the Lord” among believers. Over and over that phrase is used when referring to telling others about who Jesus was and why it matters. Sometimes, they were just referring back to what they had physically heard Jesus say before he left earth. Even then, it was based on the confirmation of more than one person.

There were some prophecies about events. Counsel was given and encouragement enjoyed. But the advent of the Holy Spirit made it unnecessary for one person to be an important conduit of communication from God to other followers of Jesus Christ. There are even warnings given to believers to carefully test all that is told to them. With this model for the church, any claim to have “a word from the Lord” for someone else seems fairly presumptuous if there is no other confirmation to the individual himself being spoken to.

While I was researching this, I found this article about the “word of God,” and just how powerful it really is. I, for one, would be pretty careful about claiming I have a special revelation for someone else! While God the Father is totally approachable because of what Jesus Christ has done for us, and I am very sure of speaking the truth of that, I will tread lightly when it comes to speaking dogmatic, specific guidance or correction into other people’s lives. That is the stuff cults and pseudo-Christian religions are made of.

[box]RVWD is my abbreviation for Religious Vocabulary Word of the Day. (You can read my introduction to the RVWD series here.) I do not intend for these word investigations to be exhaustive, but I hope they stimulate some thinking about assumptions. Possibly they will help with honest evaluations about what is truth and what is unnecessary baggage in life. [/box]

The word theology is not in any of the 8 most common English translations or paraphrases of the Bible. Still, one must ask, “Does the lack of a specific word nullify or diminish the concept, or the application of the concept?”  To consider this, let’s begin by breaking down the word itself.

The parts of the word theology are very basic and easy to define. Theo- does, in fact, mean “God” or “god.” It is said to be derived from the Greek theos, but that word is of uncertain Indo-European origin, of which there is not written record. This unknown Indo-European word dhewes is surmised to mean “to storm, breathe.” As words, none of these has a primary usuage connection to the God of the Bible.

Any student is familiar with the suffix -logy, and has probably been told it means “to study.” This is an implied meaning. It more specifically means

1) “to speak of (something in particular)” or

2) a “science, doctrine, or theory.”

I suggest that 2) could be expanded to: “all the words used to speak of certain subject in an attempt to study or explain it.” In reality, the word theology is most often used to designate “that someone has obtained an academic degree which gives them an honored position of expertise that others are in need of benefitting from.”

What should be discussed is whether this is the perspective presented in the Bible and if it is a useful approach for those who would seek the God of the Bible.

The case could be made that we all “study” someone we love, in order to know them and love them better. In that sense, we should all be pursuing theology. And, surely, along the way, we all get encouragement and advice from those around us on the best way and attitude for proceeding in relationships.

The fact remains that no one can have the relationship for us. There is no one who can become an expert in marriage, for example, and then create our marriage relationship for us. Even if a couple goes in for weekly counseling of some sort, or gets regular words of encouragement from friends, the bulk of the time and effort has to be the couple’s or all is for naught. The commitment to the marriage has to be on the part of the two people involved or it simply doesn’t exist. To say it another way, there is no degree in psychology or family therapy that can empower an outsider to impact other people’s relationships to the same effect as their commitment to each other.

Yet, the Bible says “some will be teachers,” so doesn’t that imply that we need experts to teach us about important spiritual issues? Well, it also says a lot about parents teaching their children, and pretty obviously parents are not expected (by God, anyway) to go to school to get a degree in parenting. The model is more that those experienced in and matured by the rigors of life are to pass on their knowledge to those who will ask and listen. There is also the strong suggestion that such will happen based on meaningful relationship with the mature person, because any truly helpful advice has to come from a place of real insight into the details of a person’s life. No two situations, children, or marriages are exactly the same. Principles are good, but people most often need help getting through the nitty gritty of challenges, and a source of personal kind words, as well as advice.

All that being said, the crux of the matter is that if the use of the word theology:

• distances you from God, because only experts can really know Him, or
• keeps you from helping others, because only experts can really help, or
• repels you from God, because experts are often pompous

then its use is detrimental.

If the use of the word theology is inconsequential to your understanding of who God is, that is okay, because there are plenty of other words that do a better job of describing

• how and why God made us, and
• how He wants us to know and follow Him.

Jesus’s words as recorded in Mark 12:30 are “AND YOU SHALL LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART, AND WITH ALL YOUR SOUL, AND WITH ALL YOUR MIND, AND WITH ALL YOUR STRENGTH.”  I don’t think anyone needs a degree in theology to do that.

Resources I used for this word study:

Webster’s New World College Dictionary, Indexed Fourth Edition

blueletterbible.org

New American Standard Bible

Cruden’s Complete Concordance (Zondervan Classic Reference Series)

[box]RVWD is my abbreviation for Religious Vocabulary Word of the Day. (You can read my introduction to the RVWD series here.) I do not intend for these word investigations to be exhaustive, but I hope they stimulate some thinking about assumptions. Possibly they will help with honest evaluations about what is truth and what is unnecessary baggage in life. [/box]

Have you ever been reading a Jane Austen novel and wondered why the English call their neighborhood religious liaisons vicars? It isn’t a word in the Bible. Usually religious systems that are trying to build off of Biblical status will at least re-use Biblical vocabulary to help legitimize themselves. The answer about vicar seems to be two-fold and political, a simple review of history indicates.

First of all, the Catholic organization, which a certain English monarch was trying to get out from under the political thumb of, had already used the term “priest” pretty thoroughly. To use it again would be too close to conceding to the Catholic format. If the Catholics had “done it right,” then there was no need to break away. Such is the use of vocabulary in political propaganda.

However, the English monarchy was not actually seeking to free anyone from religious authority. They wanted that strictly maintained, for political reasons. They wanted representatives out in the villages, but with the distinct message that these men (for men they all were at that time) answered and reported to higher religious persons, who were closer to the throne.

It is true that at the higher levels of English religious government (it was pretty much the English monarchy that ruled Britain, though the exact borders of subjugation varied with time), the titles of bishop were still used, but they might have felt that had more clout as a ruling office. They did throw in the prefix “Arch-,” to the highest offices, giving those roles a loftier ring. It had already been used in the ranks of English nobility with “success.”

So, where did the word vicar come from? It is thought to have traveled from Latin to Old French to Middle English. It has the same Latin root as the word vicarious, which most of us are more familiar with. The basic meaning of both words is “a substitute,” or one who “represents in the place of another.”

The designation of rector seemed to have been used interchangeably with vicar, but the definitions show that rector means “ruler”, and that a vicar was lower than a rector. This difference also showed up in how they were paid, a vicar having less control over his own income. However, as would be expected in a political-religious system, the titles and offices were based on noble rank, at least at first.

I could not find anything easily on the Church of England’s website about their current structure, beyond listing major provinces and dioceses (which according to the dictionary is just an ancient way of saying house or region in government-speak). There was promise of mention of vicars in pdfs, but when I tried to follow that, it became quite a dense maze of material. I did find this chart which shows the probably hierarchy in the Church of England around 1820, as well as some modern definitions.

Maybe by now you are also remembering other neighborhood religious titles such as parson and curate. Those seem to be the lowest of the low in terms of the political ranking and payment. A common person could even hold these jobs, because they were usually in locations that more noble personages eschewed. This churchsociety.org attempt at explaining all the roles and titles within the Church of England shows that it may be challenging for even the English people to understand. And it is subject to change.

There were even a few places where the title priest hung on, in spite of all these efforts at renaming things. This goes to show that even governments can only do so much to effect people’s choice of vocabulary, even if it superimposes it’s own power structure. Not only that, but some people take on the accepted government-speak and continue with doing what they were doing before. Some people are enough out of reach and unimportant enough that the government doesn’t kill them for using the wrong words.

All of this begs the question: Do people need a religious representative to help them connect with God? According to the New Testament, the answer is no. We learn from the Holy Spirit, we learn from each other, and we learn from those more experienced and mature, but never under a ruling religious class with authority to punish us or forgive our sin. We are constantly warned as individuals to evaluate all that we are told.

Even Jesus was not simply a vicar, or substitute. He did something for us we could not do at all by ourselves, something that if we had tried to do would not have yielded any worthwhile result. If we have any vicar, it might be said to be the Holy Spirit, but he also does nothing to stand between us and our Savior, but guides us to be in confident communion with the Father because of our inheritance with Christ.

[box]RVWD is my abbreviation for Religious Vocabulary Word of the Day. (You can read my introduction to the RVWD series here.) I do not intend for these word investigations to be exhaustive, but I hope they stimulate some thinking about assumptions. Possibly they will help with honest evaluations about what is truth and what is unnecessary baggage in life. [/box]

The word suffer in the New Testament of the Bible is translated from about 7 to 13 Greek words, depending on how you look at it. Some of the words in the longer list are from adding Greek prefixes and suffixes that result in their own explanation in Vine’s Expository Dictionary (Vine’s). Suffer is used almost twice as much in the King James Version (KJV) as any other translation of the Bible, many of those times in the KJV also being in the Old Testament in what would probably be considered a more archaic use of the word. However, the word suffer is most concentrated in the books of Acts, Matthew, Mark, and Luke in any version of the Bible that I looked at (see blueletterbible.org search results for suffer, which give word counts in the sidebar). A summary of the meanings are:

• To let, permit, allow
• To permit further
• To endure, bear with
• To send away
• To hold under
• To ill treat
• To do wrong or injustice

You can see that there tends to be a negative connotation to many of the meanings; but then, it certainly is not negative when Jesus says, “Suffer the little children to come to me,” so a reader should be careful to not assume negativity in usage, especially if the meaning of a passage seems ambiguous.

The four brief entries for suffer in Webster’s New World College Dictionary, 4^th edition, (WNWCD4) mirror Vine’s, but with two meanings that can give insight into the potential positive aspect of this word. Let’s start by looking at how the English word suffer is derived from the Latin suffero/sufferre, by adding sub-  (meaning “up, under”) and -fero (meaning “to hold or carry).” Thus, the meaning in Latin is “to hold up or support.” (See WNWCD4, the Online Etymology Dictionary [OED], and Cassel’s Latin Dictionary). I suppose that in Latin, one could “suffer the groceries” to get them in from the car, which is undoubtedly work, but not necessarily causing any significant anguish?

OED and WNWCD4 show that the new Middle English word suffern replaced the Old English word polian/prowian, which literally meant “to submit meekly,” and was also taken to mean “undergo, to be subject to, be affected by, experience, to be acted on by an agent.” This Middle English word came by way of French and Vulgate Latin. I recently experienced cold and snow, changes which I had no control over. I wasn’t all that thrilled with it, but I know a lot of people who were delighted, giving more evidence that suffering winter is different for different people.

Meanings 1 and 4 in WNWCD4 for suffer are along the lines of “undergoing or bearing up under” something difficult. Almost in contrast, meanings 2 and 3 simply speak of having an experience or allowing something that causes change or needs permission. There are many good things in life that take effort or can require dealing with change that we do because we know of the good results. Suffer me to get married, anyone? How we go through the process, that is, how negative it is, depends more on our attitude than anything. I think of working in my garden. It involves exerting effort, problem solving, using time I might use for other things, but the work is made pleasant not only by my vision of the outcome, by also by choosing to enjoy the whole experience.

This positive perspective seems to be in mind in Matthew 11:12 and Luke 16:16. The construction of these sentences by Jesus also invite investigation into the words violence and force, which will be studied in the near future in another RVWD article. Suffice to say, until then, these verses apparently describe a concept (translated in the two different Gospels) meant to engage the imagination and inspire passion. Meanwhile, any suffering I do is best qualified with a description of “what” is suffered, in order to get a more complete meaning, whether positive or negative. There is some suffering of the heart and body that results from the hatred of others, but I can suffer the process of a massage without much trouble.